Ancestral Lineage-Chapter 237: Last Conversation.

The crimson world of Face of Terror trembled.

Luciel stood amidst the towering presences of Ethan's spirit beasts, drenched in the suffocating weight of their judgment. Each one was ancient, eternal, primordial—and in the center sat Ethan, his body radiating stillness and strength that should've been impossible for a man on the brink of death.

The blood-hued air shimmered. Silence reigned, until Luciel finally broke it.

His voice cracked with an unstable mix of pain, defiance, and obsession.

'You want to know why, Ethan?'

Ethan didn't speak. He only watched. Waiting.

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Luciel smiled—bitterly, like a man holding back the tide of his own sanity.

'Because I was meant to die. Meant to be forgotten.'

He began to pace, hands trembling.

'I was born in a nameless slum, to a dying mother and a father cursed with a debt he never owed. They took everything from him. From us. They left me to rot in gutters, begging for scraps from nobles who wouldn't even look at me.'

His pacing grew erratic. His fingers twitched.

'Then they came for me. The cultists. The so-called Saints. The hypocrites who pretended to serve order. They called me a cursed child. Said I was born under an "ill omen." They tried to burn me, Ethan.'

Luciel's eyes flared with madness.

'But I didn't die. I killed them. All of them.'

He smiled again. Wider this time.

'That was the first moment I felt alive. The first time I realized—this world only respects power.'

Ethan's eyes remained steady. 'So your solution was to burn it all?'

Luciel turned sharply. 'Don't pretend you don't understand! The world abandoned people like us. You were just lucky. Born into the Smith Clan. Born with lineage, protection, access to power. But me? I had to rip it from the jaws of gods.'

He stepped closer, voice rising with passion and desperation.

'I clawed my way into the hidden texts of the ancients. I saw the truth. The Smith Clan—your ancestors—they weren't just warriors. They were chosen. Your blood… it's the key. The Ancestral Essence runs in your veins, Ethan.'

Ethan's eyes narrowed. 'And you wanted to steal it to become a god?'

'No,' Luciel hissed. 'Not just a god. The god.'

The air pulsed.

'I would recreate everything. No more Saints. No more High Orders. No more bloodlines dictating fate. I would destroy the old and forge a new world in my image—a world where no child is born cursed, where the strong do not eat the weak, where I decide what justice means!'

Ethan rose slowly, the spirit beasts standing taller behind him.

'You think godhood will fix what broke inside you?'

Luciel's face twisted in anguish. 'You don't understand… I have to do this! I've come too far. Lost too much. I've killed friends… betrayed mentors… sacrificed my humanity. If I stop now, then all of it—everything—was for nothing.'

'It was already for nothing,' Ethan said, voice like thunder and ash.

Luciel stepped back, shaking.

'I… I am not wrong… I just need your blood. Just a drop. The final piece. The key to—'

Ethan's aura surged, glowing with the combined resonance of every bonded beast, every drop of ancestral strength, every scar and memory forged in blood and creation.

'No.'

The word shattered the silence like a falling star.

Luciel flinched, his voice faltering. 'Then… I'll take it. I have no choice.'

Ethan stepped forward.

'Then come, Luciel. Face what you've created. Face the end you made.'

And the world of red began to crack.

The red world—the twisted manifestation of Ethan's Face of Terror—shuddered, cracks racing across the endless expanse like lightning through a storm. Reality trembled as the illusion collapsed, fragment by fragment.

Luciel stood at the center, shaking now—not from fear alone, but from the dawning understanding that the weight pressing on him wasn't just terror. It was judgment. Final, irreversible judgment.

Ethan raised his right hand.

The spirit beasts—Sage, the Sound Drake; Angitia the Psyche-Eye Serpent; Galeno, the Divine Tortoise; Maverick, the Barix Gargoyle; Stygian, the Cerberus; Onyx, the Formless—stepped back, encircling him in solemn silence. Their energy pulsed through Ethan's very being, no longer as individual powers, but as one.

From his open palm, a symbol appeared in the air—an intricate fractal of crimson, silver, and pale blue. It spun slowly, expanding like a living mandala, etching ancient glyphs into the bleeding sky.

Luciel's eyes widened. 'What… what is that?'

Ethan's voice echoed, layered with divine authority, the resonance of gods long dead and still unborn.

'The End of Order: Judgment Wrought in Blood and Echoes.'

Luciel screamed—not in fear, but denial—as the symbol erupted.

A column of light and shadow swallowed the world of red, cascading down upon him like divine wrath forged in a crucible of sorrow. It wasn't just magic. It wasn't just a technique. It was Ethan's Path—Order, Mysticism, Creation, and Blood—unleashed in finality.

Luciel was lifted into the air, his form unraveling, soul fragmenting under the sheer metaphysical truth of the attack.

He saw visions—every sin, every soul he'd crushed, every moment of pain he'd spread in the name of justice—and in his final second, he saw what he could have become, had he chosen differently.

'No… no no no—'

The light swallowed him.

And then, silence.

The world of red shattered completely, and Ethan fell from its depths like a broken star, collapsing onto the blackened earth of the real world.

The battlefield was quiet.

Ash floated in the air like snow.

Seraphis dropped to her knees nearby, her body trembling, face pale. Her connection with Ethan had nearly shattered in the final moments.

Around Ethan, his spirit beasts began to collapse one by one—returning to their base forms before vanishing into light. Angitia let out a low, mournful hiss. Stygian's flames sputtered out. Galeno knelt in exhaustion before disappearing. Sage, the Sound Drake, let out a soft hum—like the dying note of a violin—and vanished last.

The Sync was gone.

Ethan lay there, unmoving, the aftermath of power so immense having drained even the remnants of his divine ancestry. Blood seeped from his mouth, eyes barely open.

But he breathed.

The war… was over.

Luciel was gone.

And all that remained now, was the silence of victory.

And the terrifying price it had demanded.